Commentary on Daniel Chapters 1-12 John Calvin
DANIEL
is, Neue critische untersuchungen uber das buch Daniel. Von Heinrich Havernick. Hamburgh, A.D. 1838. This small volume of the excellent Professor at Rostock is much esteemed.
Emst. Wilm. Hengstenberg. Die Authentic des Daniel und die integritat des Sachariah. Berlin, A.D. 1831.
This work is now accessible to the English reader through the translation of the Revelation B. P. Pratten. Edinburgh, Clark, A.D. 1848.
Its contents are as follow: — The Genuineness of Daniel. Chap. 1 — History of attacks on the Book of Daniel. Chap. 2 — Reply to objections. Sect. 1 Alleged Greek Words — 2 Impure Hebrew — 3 Silence of Jesus Sirach — 4 Position in the Canon — 5 Depreciatory statements of the Jews — 6 The O. T. referred to as a complete Whole — 7 Aimless profusion of miracles — 8 Historical errors — 9 Irreconcilable contradictions — 10 Improbable and suspicious accounts — 11 Later ideas and usages — 12 Unusual indefiniteness of the prophecies — 13 This definiteness ceases with Antiochus Epiphanes — 14 Other objections — 1. The passage, Daniel 12; 2. Correspondence in ideas and expressions with much later Books; 3. Marks of Jewish national pride; 4. Absence of all higher moral tendency; 5. Passages which speak in praise of Daniel. Chap. 3 — Arguments for the Genuineness. Sect. 1 Testimony of the author himself — 2 Reception into the Canon, and general acknowledgment of Canonicity — 3 Testimony of Christ and the Apostles — 4 Traces of the Book in pre-Maceabean times — 1 The passage of Josephus, Arch. 11:8; 2. 1 Macc. 2, 59, 60; 3. The LXX. of Deuteronomy 32:8, and Isaiah 30 4; Badness of the Alex. version of Daniel, which was nearly contemporary with the alleged original composition —
5 Character of the language; 1. Use of Hebrew and Aramaean; 2. Correspondence of its Aramaean, with that of Ezra, and deviation from that of the Targums —